Right! Me too. And he'll keep you apprised about drivers and such, usually having neat links on his site Etc., and will even be an ombudsman for you with maker of stuff you buy from him if you get stuck. Nick On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 23:08:59 -0500, Laura Eaves wrote: Hey, I don't mean to advertize, but I bought my new dectalk for $650 from jerry at chirpingbat.com (it is an introductory price, he says, and may go up eventually, but it is the same as the $695 model.) Go to the chirpingbat.com site and see what else he's offering. I bought a wireless keyboard, but in truth, I have gone back to a wired version for various reasons -- it does work, but I don't need that kind of range, and I live where there's interference, and also I don't like the idea of my passwords and stuff being picked up by the people next door -- not that they'd care, or know when or how to retrieve it, but since I know this thing transmits 30 feet (he has another one with a 100 foot range) I figure anything is possible... Take care. --le ----- Original Message ----- From: "John McCann" <lists@xxxxxxxxxx> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 9:10 PM Subject: The New DecTalk USB External Synthesizer Hi Ned: Yes, indeed, the DecTalk has been resurrected in a sleeker, mmore up-to-date iteration; supporting both USB and serial connections, which makes it fully backwards compatible. Prior to december 31, 2004, Innovation Rehabilitation Technologies, Inc., (I R T I), was offering it for $645. The current street price (on blind street, <smile.), is $695. I recently purchased one, and, while you can't use it in USB mode under linux (at least not at the current time), it works fine under linux when using the serial cable. Even when using it in serial mode (as you necessarily will do when using linux), you will be able to use the USB cable to provide power to the unit, which obviates the need to rely on the user-replaceable standard 9-volt battery (which only gives you about an hour anyway) or worse yet, the stereotypically obnoxious and cumbersome wall wart. For what it's worth, feel free to access my previous list post on this subject, posted December 8th, 2004, 3:08 pm EDT. John Hi Laura, So a brand new dec talk hardware synth is available from the company (DEC) itself? How much money, if you don't mind? I have identical problem. At school they are not sure how to deal with accessible Linux for me so they were wondering do I have a laptop (I don't) but I was eager to buy one if it is up to the task. I'll be watching very closely answers on this one! thanks for raising the question. Ned _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup at braille.uwo.ca http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup at braille.uwo.ca http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
